


Paperback

by palimpsestus



Category: Firewatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 07:14:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5996476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palimpsestus/pseuds/palimpsestus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Each year, Delilah brings new books to the Shoshone. It feels like she's returning the paper to its ancestral home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paperback

**Author's Note:**

> While playing Firewatch (which I LOVED), I was weirdly reminded of the Alan Wake games. This was the result.

In the dry, crackling heat of the Wyoming summer, she couldn’t help thinking of the poem that seemed to cling to her mind in wisps.

 _For he did not know, that beyond the lake he called home,_  
_There lied a deeper, and darker ocean green._  
_Where waves are both wilder and more serene._  
_To its ports I've been,_  
_To its ports I've been._

Delilah brought new books in each year. She felt like she was doing her own bit to reintroduce the wilderness to the world, letting new ideas and stories circulate among the roots and trees. The old and the new.

_The Common Pulp Novel, notable for their bright and thin hides, often cluster in supply caches and in high lookout shacks. Prolific breeders, they show surprising genetic fidelity, often bearing very similar characteristics across individuals._

_Not to be confused with the Lesser Spotted Classic, which typically features duller colouration, is heavier and slower to reproduce.  Hybridisation is possible._

Delilah leaned against the frame of the tower, sheltering in the lee of its shadow, watching the wind rustle the sparse grasses atop the rocky ridge. She watched the dark windows of Two Forks Lookout, the burned umber smears of cloud on that brilliant sky, and the eagle circling on the updraft up on the heights.

She thought of the tequila cooling in the creek, and the lake where Henry had chased off those girls. Neither of those were deep, green fathoms. But yet her thoughts returned again to those words.

_Where waves are both wilder and more serene._

The particular book she’d brought down into the shade with her was an old favourite. Zane was perhaps better known for his poems than his prose, but ‘ _In Her Dreams to Prevail_ ’ was a much loved summer companion. The only book of Zane’s she’d ever found that had been about a woman. A cold and distant creature who manipulated all the men in Small Town, Washington, while throughout something dark and malevolent watched. The pages had always had the ability to transport her somewhere cold and dull, when the blue skies of Shoshone were too heavy and hot above her head.

She had no need for the chilling words tonight. Hadn’t for some time. In truth, not since the day she’d entered her tower to find her books rearranged.

The June fire towered out to the south-east, but the wind kept the smoke billowing further eastwards, and for that Delilah was grateful. She closed her eyes and drew her arms tighter around her chest.

Just before the season started she’d found herself drinking too much beer after a night at the local dive, and slept on the couch while the TV flickered in the corner of her living room. Her dreams had been a strange mix of her memories of summers past and the episode of Night Springs that was playing in the corner.

She had never woken from that hops addled dream. She’d walked into a wilderness that watched her back.

This couldn’t be real. Couldn’t and shouldn’t be real. It was more likely Henry than anything else. She stared at the scuffed sandy toes of her boots. Could Henry have hiked over here to rearrange her books? It would have been a long journey without the cable car.

Could he have done it? The dry voice on the other end of the radio? The figure outlined in the lantern light at night?

_For he did not know, that beyond the lake he called home,_

She shivered. It was enough to make her scramble up the rocks to the stairs and then up into the stuffy heat of her lookout’s cabin. It didn’t feel much warmer though, and she tugged the flannel blanket over her shoulders, sitting down by the radio and tucking the plaid in around her shoulders.

_There lied a deeper, and darker ocean green._

He’d been quiet today. She ran her fingertips over the plastic of the handset, wondering where he was, what trail he was hiking, if he was looking up to her tower . . .

Or if he knew exactly where she was. If he was waiting for the next mindfuck.

Men.

_Where waves are both wilder and more serene._

The radio crackled and her fingers were flying to the receiver even before Henry’s voice came through, “Hey, D?” he sounded uncertain.

“Hey, Hank,” she drawled, long before her worries caught up with her wit.

“So I’ve been having one of those days, I fell coming out of Thunder Canyon and this morning I got a splinter, a _splinter_ , from the handrail on the tower.”

“Ohhhh, poor baby!” she cooed, squinting out at the tower. Sure enough, the light flickered on. A white squares presenting themselves against the horizon, and then the figure flickering in front of them.

“Yeah! I know!” She could hear his voice brimming with his amusement. “So I’m, uh, finishing this bottle of Ferreter tonight.”

“Does that mean I can’t count on you to watch June?” she teased.

“Maybe you’ll join me?” He asked, slow and tentative, while she smiled broadly.

“I think I could find something,” she murmured into the receiver.

_To its ports I've been,_

She could hear his huff of laughter over the crackle of the airwaves. She let her fingers trail over the ‘transmit’ button. “Please don’t be fucking with me, Henry,” she whispered, her fingertips just shy of pressing the transmit down.

_To its ports I've been._

 


End file.
